Romanticism In Context: Shelley’s And Keats’s Verse And .

International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation StudiesISSN: 2202-9451www.ijclts.aiac.org.auRomanticism in Context: Shelley’s and Keats’s Verse and Prose: Keats’s Letters and Ode to aNightingale, Shelley’s Defense of Poetry and SkylarkWalid A. Zaiter*Department of Languages and Translation, Taibah University, Saudi ArabiaCorresponding Author: Walid A. Zaiter, E-mail: walid241960@yahoo.comARTICLE INFOABSTRACTArticle historyReceived: April 28, 2018Accepted: June 20, 2018Published: July 31, 2018Volume: 6 Issue: 3This paper argues it is probably unavoidable perceiving the works of Shelley and Keats withoutputting these works in the context of the age and in the context of Romanticism. On the wholethe selected pieces of prose and verse of the poets represent their postulations in an era whichwitnessed great revolutions, political and industrial bringing about new trends in literature and insociety. From the personal perspective of the two poets, the birds in the poems represent idealsreflecting the treatment of imagination, nature and ideology of their time and their individualexperience, knowledge of the world and of prosody. Thus the treatment of this topic as suchopens an old and new interpretation of the poets’ work since the topics in their poetry can applyto their age and ours.Conflicts of interest: NoneFunding: NoneKeywords:Romanticism in eyINTRODUCTIONStephen Prickett in his introduction to The Context of English Literature: The Romantics, defines Romanticism as“characterizing a distinctive age, or even a movement.The period between 1770 and 1830 had, or was believedto have, an internal consistency and rationale uniquely itsown”(1). He as well traces down the “original usage of theword “romantic “which goes back to1656. He found thatthe word romantic and its forms indicate “the suggestionsof fable, fairy tale and even dream were never very far fromthe word[romantic] throughout most of the eighteenth century(1). Prickett asserts that the word [romantic] was firstused by Goethe and Schiller at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Prickett suggests that Schiller, then, saw inRomanticism “union of opposites or discordant qualities.Like Schiller, Schlegel believed that Romanticism replacedclassicism. Prickett suggests that the word romantic couldapply to any writer from any age as long he or she maintainsthe qualities mentioned above. Therefore, it is not “difficultto see Aeschylus as romantic and Sophocles as classic.” InEngland the Elizabethan was surely as much as a romanticage as was the end of the eighteenth century” (3). In thesame vein Rene Wellek in “The Concept of Romanticism inLiterary History” views Romanticism as “ a new designation for poetry, opposed to the poetry of neoclassicism, anddrawing its inspiration and models from the Middle Agesand the Renaissance”(4).Then along his essay he explicatesthe distinctive characteristics of romantic poets focusing onimagination, nature symbol and myth in their poetry. However, each of the romantics treated these elements especiallyimagination distinctively. He states that Blake, Wordsworth,Coleridge and Keats did appear to share similar conceptsin their lives, their art and in their attitude to their environment. Wordsworth and Coleridge. commonly usedimagination to describe psychological activity, whereas forBlake and Keats the word carried a transcendent or visionary connotation.” (5). other elements which most romantics drew on in their poetry were religion, philosophy andpolitics.”Literature was not an activity separate from politics, philosophy or religion”. On these grounds Wordsworth,acquired poetry by means of politics and philosophy. So didColeridge who was a political journalist, preacher and lecturer, philosopher, theologian and literary critic (5). Shelleyand Keats followed their heels but Shelley went too far inPublished by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license ://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.6n.3p.34

Romanticism in Context: Shelley’s and Keats’s verse and prose:Keats’s Letters and Ode to a Nightingale, Shelley’s Defense of poetry and Skylark his views regarding religion. In this context Jake Porter inhis essay “ Coleridge, Shelly, Keats, and God: The Romantic Poetics of Doubt” (2016) examines “a sampling of thewritings of “ these poets and “relate them to two disparatetheological strands – natural religion and Deism”(1-2). Raymond Williams in Culture and Society (1958) sums up thesubject matter of all the romantics versus other poets. “TheRomantic Artist than the poets from Blake and Wordsworthto Shelley and Keats there have been few generations ofcreative writers more deeply interested and more involvedin study and criticism of the society of their day”(30). Surprisingly, according to Seamus Perry in “Romanticism: TheBrief History of a Concept” (1999) the “Romantics did notknow that was what they were.” It was the business of thecritics of our age,who have categorized the romantics intolake School’ (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey), the‘Demonic School’ (most notoriously, Byron), the ‘CockneySchool’ (Leigh Hunt and Keats)”(2). These aspects abovementioned are the criteria upon which Romanticism andthe romantics must be taken into consideration to study anywork of the romantics. They provide plausible interpretation for critics of the romantics in any age in accordancewith new literary that appears in every age: Classicism, Romanticism, Modernism, etc. these interpretation will add tothe canonical poets of Romanticism.ROMANTICISM IN ENGLAND AND FRANCESince we cannot divorce Romanticism as a literary movement from other variables which affect the milieu of the age,one may wonder about the historical and political contextsin England between 1782 and 1832. This period witnessedthe rise of Romanticism. Colin Brooks asserts that “Romantic England was an England of wars and rumors of war.Throughout the years 1782- 1832 the political system was under stress. it had to organize the fighting of the wars againstFrance. It had to maintain public order whilst insisting uponindividual responsibilities. (15-7). He concludes his main observations on the: The age was self-conscious, searching forits spirit. It was an age of transition. It was an age of paradoxand contradiction. Class became an appropriate category forsuch arguments. The Industrial and the French Revolutionswere separate phenomena: but they soon became, and stillare, indissoluble in their consequences, threats and promises” (68- 9). Thus most of the Romantics found inspiration inthe French Revolution for its universal tenets of democracy,freedom and equality. “Romantic texts need to be understoodwith some sense of the historical circumstances within whichthey were produced”(Bygrave 15). David Duff in his essay“From Revolution to Romanticism: The Historical Contextto 1800” argues that one should “begin with the Romantics’own impressions about the historical forces that shaped theirwritings.” He adds: “For William Hazlitt, author of a collection of essays actually entitled the Spirit of the Age (1825),there was no doubt that the central historical experience ofhis generation was the French Revolution” (23). This wasevident in the writings of the romantics of both generations.35ROMANTICISM, PHILOSOPHY, NATURE ANDVALUESOne may equally wonder about philosophical influence ofJohn Lock on the Romantics since the movement was philosophical. T.J. Diffey in his essay “The Roots of Imagination:the philosophical context” affirms that “essentially Lockeanempiricism and English Romanticism are at issue over twomain questions: the nature of perception, and the nature oflanguage and meaning. (166). Another component of Romanticism is nature which is totally different from that of theeighteenth century in that Prickett in an essay entitled “Romantic Literature” cites A. O. Lovejoy who “claims to havedistinguished more than sixty separate meanings of the wordnature, but the complexity of the word and its connotationsare apparent” (211). Although Nature plays an important roleas a source of inspiration to all the romantics, it has certaincontexts in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge Keats, andShelley. It depends on the early and later poetry of each poet,which defines its influences on the Romantics, internallyor externally. Since the scope of this paper is not on all theRomantics, but only on Shelley and Keats, then they willreceive equal treatment or discussion, where they convergeand diverge on nature, imagination and values. Porter sumsup the beliefs of the two poets: “Shelley expressed the unknownability of ultimate reality, but it was Keats who wasto take it further and express perhaps the highest floweringof the belief/doubt dialectic in Romantic poetry”(13). Theseaspects are found in some pieces of their prose and verse:Keats’s Letters and Ode to a Nightingale, Shelley’s Defenseof poetry and Skylark. These works are formulations ofthought and poetry.SHELLEY AND KEATS: IMAGINATION ANDNATURE VERSUS ENLIGHTENMENTPeter J. Kitson in “Beyond the Enlightenment” argues: InThe Defence of Poetry Shelley clearly distinguishes betweenthe empirical reason from the higher imaginative powers ofthe mind.” On this distinction the Romantics adopted anddeveloped trends in Enlightenment philosophy” (40) withthe aid of Kant’s Philosophy. The same applies to “Keats’scriticism of science’s tendency to demystify the world”(41).Shelley’s Defense of Poetry and Keats’s Letters are canonical works that set a difference between the two poets andtheir poetry. Despite the fact that Shelley wrote his Defenseof Poetry by reading the article entitled “The Four Ages ofPoetry,” Shelley remarkably voiced his postulations aboutthe role and function of poets and poetry. Shelley definespoetry in terms of imagination, man, music (Æolian lyre).These elements are significant to read Shelley as a poet tosee where his inspiration is triggered. According to Shelley poetry is created by imagination and man is theme ofall poetry” the expression of the imagination: and poetry isconnate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument overwhich a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over anÆolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody”(The Oxford Anthology o English Literature: